Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Story of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. However this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. Initially matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of clandestine, winding moments of physical constraint and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.
